Gyrfalcon:Hepting v. AT&T is a United States class action lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the telecommunications company AT&T, in which the EFF alleges that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the communications of the United States, including AT&T customers, businesses and third parties whose communications were routed through AT&T's network, as well as Voice over IP telephone calls routed via the Internet.

Took me 60 seconds on Google to find out that in Hepting, the plaintiffs alleged the US government had the capability to wiretap, record and store phone calls (presumably foreign and domestic), but had absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they were doing so without a court order. The case was dismissed by the 9th Circuit.

Jewel v. National Security Agency is a similar class action suit filed in September 2008 and naming the NSA and the Bush administration.

And in this case (about five minutes of my life wasted), the entire lawsuit is built upon the affidavit of William Binney who (again, as in Hepting) alleges the NSA had the capability to wiretap domestic calls, but concedes he had no first hand knowledge of the program. Further, he has no evidence that wiretapping without a court order was taking place ... he simply states that it's his opinion that it must be ("The NSA also has the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers. The wholesale collection of data allows the NSA to identify and analyze Entities or Communities of interest later in a static database. Based on my proximity to the PSP and my years of experience at the NSA, I can draw informed conclusions from the available facts. Those facts indicate that the NSA is doing both."). That's it. It's an entire lawsuit built around the notion that, since the NSA owns computers that he knows can intercept and record phone calls, they must be doing so in an unconstitutional and illegal manner. No evidence.

Then, he tacks on at the very end that because the government started building the Utah facility in 2009 (hint, Bush wasn't president then) to store NSA data, they must be intending to use that facility to store illegally intercepted and recorded conversations. Again, no evidence. It's just "Hey, I've got a hunch."

R.A.Danny:Gyrfalcon: R.A.Danny: DeaH: Repeal the Patriot Act and any law that okays this sort of thing. And, while we're at it, fire KILL a whole bunch of people over this.

We are pretty much at a point where a Second Amendment solution is appropriate.

Not quite. Before a revolution can be successful, the government has to be unable to pay the military.

We're really at a historic point when you bring up the subject of revolution though. You gotta admit that no matter what side of the subject you are on.

Well, it's closer to likely than it has been before; which is still not very likely. Too many things still have to happen. And if there is, it would probably be the Teahadists and the militias stringing up the barbed wire and daring everyone else to cross their line (and we'd all say "No, you're fine where you are" and go about our business). But realistically speaking, before a revolution can succeed, the revolutionaries have to be at least 95% assured that not only can they take on the military (a favorite wet dream of gun-nuts everywhere) but that the military will not shoot back. And unless or until that day comes, no revolution can ever succeed.

That's why the rebels in Libya had to ask for help from France before they could finally take Qaddafi down; and why Assad had to turn to sarin gas but is still in control of his government. The rebels can fight the army on their own terms; but so long as the guys with the big guns are obeying orders, the rebels can't win UNLESS someone with bigger guns helps out. Or unless the army turns around and shoots the leaders behind the lines, as Mubarak found out.

America isn't nearly to that point yet. Our "rebels" aren't nearly as organized or unified; and even if they were, they can't fight the US Marines on their own terms. So any revolution has to depend on the Marines shooting the other way and that's not nearly close to being possible yet. You don't shoot the guy who writes your check.

Granny_Panties:The thing that dumbfounds me the most about this "leak" is the fact that you idiots didn't know this was happening since 2001.

Is everyone here a bunch of morons? What did you guys think the Patriot Act was? Most of the morans that are whining about this "intrusion" are the same idiots that said I hated America when anyone with 1/2 a brain knew this was what was going to happen.

Gyrfalcon:Well, it's closer to likely than it has been before; which is still not very likely. Too many things still have to happen. And if there is, it would probably be the Teahadists and the militias stringing up the barbed wire and daring everyone else to cross their line (and we'd all say "No, you're fine where you are" and go about our business). But realistically speaking, before a revolution can succeed, the revolutionaries have to be at least 95% assured that not only can they take on the military (a favorite wet dream of gun-nuts everywhere) but that the military will not shoot back. And unless or until that day comes, no revolution can ever succeed.

If you look at most of the recent revolutions and the present uprisings you'll notice one thing: None of those revolting are fat asses.

Yeah, we'll accept the status quo so long as we're able to go to McDonalds and fill our pie holes. it's pathetic.

Lsherm:What scares me is that Obama was told something AFTER he was elected that clearly changed his mind on this. What the fark is he told every day in his security briefing? Has to be some scary shiat.

I thought about this.

I think after he was elected, but before he took office. He had the "presidential handoff thing" with Bush. It went something like this:

Obama: Hey Bush, I have some questions. Even though we are from different political parties, I believe in mutual respect and want to hear your thoughts.Bush: Shoot, pardnerObama: What was the toughest thing you ever had to do?Bush: Do? Presidents don't do anything. I just sat around and did some busy-work policy. Nothing that really matters.Obama: With all due respect Mr. Bush, but I'm going to clean up Washington. Starting with Gitmo, Patriot Act...Bush: Hold on son. I had the same conversation with Clinton when I took office. I didn't want nation building. I wanted smaller government. I thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea. But you do what you're told to do.Obama: Oh, come on. You're telling me your hands were tied on this?Bush: I'm going to give you a file here. It will take you awhile to digest. Hell, when I read this file I thought Ol Slick Willy was putting one over on me. But let me tell you a bit about history. In the 1950s, we made contact with aliens. That's right, little green men. They came from a small cluster of stars -- about 1000 -- that's on the edge of the milky way. It's there due to dark matter or some such. Well, after the first contact, they started to infiltrate us. They weren't peaceful. But hell we deserve it for what we did to the Indians. Nixon, bless his heart, sat down with the Soviets and hammered out a deal, that we would be partners in this war.Obama: You're kidding me.Bush: Sadly, I'm not. Now the whole Watergate thing was Nixon trying to keep a lid on this. Could you imagine if people knew? There would be panic on the streets. Riots. Chaos. End of civilization. Hell, the US Presidency had sovereignty until under Carter when certain people with a lot of power decided it was best not to let citizens pick their leaders. So Reagan was the first president picked by the group. He had the charisma to pull it off. He was chosen because as an actor, well... he'd be able to keep everything on the "down low" as my daughters say. Really sell the whole debt thing.Obama: Aliens? Really?Bush: That's right. It hasn't been all bad. In the 1990s we were able to reverse engineer some of their technology. That's what Moore's law is -- the more technology we can reverse engineer, the more we're able to. Anyway, we had to tell Gore about this so he would stop contesting the election, and that's why he grew a beard and went off the deep end there for a bit.Obama: So, we're in a galactic war with Aliens... and the President is a puppet... what about Iraq, the Patriot Act... axis of evil...Bush: Well, the Iraq thing is tricky. The aliens, well they'd been here before. The prophet Mohammed was an attempt at taking over the world through religion. See, these little buggers have some sort of mind control. But they can't use it on public figures because it completely changes their personality. One of the side affects of even being in the vicinity of a MCH -- mind controlled human that is -- you'll learn the jargon soon enough -- is it turns people homosexual. Part of the reason I wanted to keep the sodomy laws on the books is it was a good way to sniff out activity. I have no problem with gay marriage, but it's easier to monitor mind control incidents by tracking pride rallies. If homosexuality was perceived as normal, then we'd be lost if the aliens ever moved out of their San Francisco stronghold.Obama: You were talking about Iraq...Bush: Oh, I was getting ahead of myself there. You see, Saddam was convinced by the aliens that he was the next prophet. See they couldn't mind control him, because his personality would change. Saddam was letting them build a massive Mind Control generator in Iraq that could be used to enslave all of us. Out there in the desert. Due to the earth's magnetic currents, building the thing in the middle east would have amplified the signal... covered the whole world. That's what we were there for. The whole nuke thing was the best we could come up with. But they've been doing this for years. You think the Soviets really wanted to invade Afghanistan? Carter, the dummy, tried to block the war for humanitarian reasons. That's why Americans don't get to vote for their president any more. Diebold made that a lot easier for us to hide.Obama: And... the Patriot Act...?Bush: Funny thing about these aliens is that they don't talk like you and me. They use telepathic communication. Because it's all electromagnetic based, that's what the boys in A51 say, the aliens can tap into cell phones, internet, whatever... and pretend to talk to people. So see this phone here? Lets say Dick Cheney calls me up. I can't tell if it's Dick Cheney or an alien foolin' the system. Now with enough data crunching, we can tell. Also figure out where they are transmitting from. We're working on a way to monitor all communication devices and dump the data on a server somewhere. Then go through it and figure out which calls have been spoofed. It's called PRISM. You'll be briefed on it later.Obama: This is insane! A war with aliens! Mind control! I have to tell someone!Bush: Oh, I wouldn't be doing that. No, sir. The group wouldn't like it very much. There would be consequences. That message would never get out. You think the Secret Service is here to protect us? No, they're here to keep things running smoothly.Obama: I see. This is mind-blowing. So who runs things?Bush: Well, it's those Bliderberg guys. They have a lot going on, but running this country is one of them. It's not all bad.Obama: A puppet, you're telling me I'm a puppet and I can't do anything about it.Bush: Oh, it ain't all bad. You can play a lot of golf, give fancy speeches. Hell, the election won't even matter. If you say the right things, they'll give you a second term. I've never read so many books as I did being president. You signed up to serve your country right? Well, this is the service it needs.Obama: Okay. Okay. This will be okay.Bush: One more thing. Watch out for that Ron Paul fellow. With think the aliens got to him. As I said, the mind control leaves some strange footprints on a man's personality.Obama: Who else has been compromised?Bush: Well, Denis Kucinich. Denis Rodman. The whole Kim family over in North Korea. Most suicide bombers, but you don't know that till later. The psych boys have a profile worked up if you're interested, but we got agencies to deal with that.Obama: I need some time... to think about this...Bush: Sure, sure. Take your time. It's not easy. In the beginning of my term, I thought I would be a bit subversive. You know, let a few hints slide here and there. I hate being under someone's thumb. But boy, then they stated writing my speeches to make me sound like a moron. So it's easier just to do what they say. They'll put the words on the teleprompter. Just read them and smile.Obama: Thanks, George. I think I can do this.Bush: Sure you can. They wouldn't have picked you if you couldn't. And hell, ol' Hillary already knows about this. If you don't think you're ready, arrangements can be made. But they want her in 2016 for some reason. I think they're going to crash the housing and banking sector as a distraction to hide the massive cost of this war. But don't tell anyone you heard that from me, that's a bit above my pay grade.Obama: I'll be in touch. Take care George.Bush: See ya! Read that file, let me know if you have any questions. Also, if you get in any trouble just call up the Koch brothers. Good people.

Nabb1: I'm sure the bootlickers will be here soon enough to tell us we have no reason to be upset.

Upset? Yeah, but what makes anybody think that the President could've said "End it." and it would've?

Oh, come on... I know we haven't had any in quite a while, but that's what LEADERSHIP is.... It might go like this:

"General Alexander, as Director of the NSA, you are hereby ordered to cease and desist ANY activity pursuant to intelligence operations which violate the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. Do this immediately."

"Yes, sir."

... Two weeks later:

"General Alexander, I note that the NSA is still carrying on extra-constitutional spying on U.S. citizens."

"Only when absolutely necessary, Mr. President."

"Sergeant, place General Alexander under arrest, and convene a courts martial to determine if his violations are serious enough to warrant execution."

"General Alexander, your weapon please, and please come with me..."

"Hello, Secretary of Defense? This is the President. I need you to recommend a new NSA Director -- one who will follow the Constitution, according to the oath. Yes, right away."

The above might have to be repeated several times. The NSA director reports to the Sec Def, who reports to the President. It's not like convincing Congress to pass legislation, it is a case of military orders passed down from the Commander in Chief.

Vectron:The MSM is complicit in all this. Everyone needs to kill their television.Remember Howard Dean's Yell? How it was played over and over again all that weekend?Why? He was anti-war.

I'm firmly convinced that "unelectable" is nothing more than a code phrase meaning "we don't own them".

The corporate owned media certainly does spend a whole lot of time telling us who is "unelectable" and that if we don't vote for one of the two "electable" choices they give us, we're just "wasting our vote".

Given your level of experience and expertise, I would sincerely would like to hear your opinion on how to balance the government's "need to know" and our individual rights to privacy...

While you have pointed out the lax security at many facilities, I am still perplexed as how Bradley Manning and Eric Snowden walk out of secured facilities with a treasure trove of top-secret information...

Lastly, I am not angry with Snowden (at this point) for how he released the information, but I feel Bradley Manning is a traitor. Am I wrong?

None of my experience is in top secret agencies. Think things more like the FDA or your local DMV. So I can't really say much on how government secrets could best be kept but for sensitive data in other agencies and in Fortune 500 companies, making a bit of effort would be a good start. Seriously, most of these places hand over the keys to the kingdom to everyone who walks in the door of the IT department. Blocking people from using USB drives and taking them home with them wouldn't be such an issue if the data copied on to them wasn't easily accessible to so many in the first place. Restricting access to only those who need it slows down development of new products and makes it much harder to manage data. There's a cost involved both financially and in terms of opportunity costs. Until there is real pain involved beyond a token fine and an embarrassing news story that's soon forgotten, most places aren't going to go through the extra effort to protect data. It requires extra people, annoys other people trying to get their job done, and slows everything down. But if we want to have privacy, it's an expense that must be paid.

I'm not really in a position to say you're right or wrong about your feelings on Snowden or Manning. In both cases we discovered our government doing things that we'd rather think ir doesn't do. The things that Manning released that get him labeled a traitor are the things you'd expect our government to do (have spies inside terrorist organizations and hostile governments). The other things he released, such as how much government spying is done for the benefit of corporate interests, needs to get more attention. Not that using government and military resources to help corporations get what they want is anything new but it's still a part of our spy structure that most don't recognize as existing. Should we really put people in harms way so GE can learn what Siemens is up to and do it at taxpayer expense?

m00:Lsherm: What scares me is that Obama was told something AFTER he was elected that clearly changed his mind on this. What the fark is he told every day in his security briefing? Has to be some scary shiat.

I thought about this.

I think after he was elected, but before he took office. He had the "presidential handoff thing" with Bush. It went something like this:

Obama: Hey Bush, I have some questions. Even though we are from different political parties, I believe in mutual respect and want to hear your thoughts.Bush: Shoot, pardnerObama: What was the toughest thing you ever had to do?Bush: Do? Presidents don't do anything. I just sat around and did some busy-work policy. Nothing that really matters.Obama: With all due respect Mr. Bush, but I'm going to clean up Washington. Starting with Gitmo, Patriot Act...Bush: Hold on son. I had the same conversation with Clinton when I took office. I didn't want nation building. I wanted smaller government. I thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea. But you do what you're told to do.Obama: Oh, come on. You're telling me your hands were tied on this?Bush: I'm going to give you a file here. It will take you awhile to digest. Hell, when I read this file I thought Ol Slick Willy was putting one over on me. But let me tell you a bit about history. In the 1950s, we made contact with aliens. That's right, little green men. They came from a small cluster of stars -- about 1000 -- that's on the edge of the milky way. It's there due to dark matter or some such. Well, after the first contact, they started to infiltrate us. They weren't peaceful. But hell we deserve it for what we did to the Indians. Nixon, bless his heart, sat down with the Soviets and hammered out a deal, that we would be partners in this war.Obama: You're kidding me.Bush: Sadly, I'm not. Now the whole Watergate thing was Nixon trying to keep a lid on this. Could you imagine if people knew? There would be panic on the streets. Riots. Chaos. End of civilization. ...

There hasn't been a progressive in office for decades. Democrats are center-right authoritarians, while Republicans are extreme-right authoritarians. Just because Fox says every Democrat is the most liberal lib EVAR doesn't make it true.

If Democrats are "center-right" and Republicans are "far-right," then who has made this country about half socialist? The problem is, YOU are a bit to the left of Che Guevara, so EVERYBODY looks like a rightist -- to you.

GeneralJim:LordJiro: There hasn't been a progressive in office for decades. Democrats are center-right authoritarians, while Republicans are extreme-right authoritarians. Just because Fox says every Democrat is the most liberal lib EVAR doesn't make it true.If Democrats are "center-right" and Republicans are "far-right," then who has made this country about half socialist? The problem is, YOU are a bit to the left of Che Guevara, so EVERYBODY looks like a rightist -- to you.

"Half socialist." In a country with 7% union penetration and mass privatization in every sector of government. You're beyond ridiculous.

m00:Lsherm: What scares me is that Obama was told something AFTER he was elected that clearly changed his mind on this. What the fark is he told every day in his security briefing? Has to be some scary shiat.

I thought about this.

I think after he was elected, but before he took office. He had the "presidential handoff thing" with Bush. It went something like this:

Obama: Hey Bush, I have some questions. Even though we are from different political parties, I believe in mutual respect and want to hear your thoughts.Bush: Shoot, pardnerObama: What was the toughest thing you ever had to do?Bush: Do? Presidents don't do anything. I just sat around and did some busy-work policy. Nothing that really matters.Obama: With all due respect Mr. Bush, but I'm going to clean up Washington. Starting with Gitmo, Patriot Act...Bush: Hold on son. I had the same conversation with Clinton when I took office. I didn't want nation building. I wanted smaller government. I thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea. But you do what you're told to do.Obama: Oh, come on. You're telling me your hands were tied on this?Bush: I'm going to give you a file here. It will take you awhile to digest. Hell, when I read this file I thought Ol Slick Willy was putting one over on me. But let me tell you a bit about history. In the 1950s, we made contact with aliens. That's right, little green men. They came from a small cluster of stars -- about 1000 -- that's on the edge of the milky way. It's there due to dark matter or some such. Well, after the first contact, they started to infiltrate us. They weren't peaceful. But hell we deserve it for what we did to the Indians. Nixon, bless his heart, sat down with the Soviets and hammered out a deal, that we would be partners in this war.Obama: You're kidding me.Bush: Sadly, I'm not. Now the whole Watergate thing was Nixon trying to keep a lid on this. Could you imagine if people knew? There would be panic on the streets. Riots. Chaos. End of civilization. ...

jpo2269: However, the picture being painted is not what makes a "free society" and when an analyst can just decide to listen in on a call without someone being held accountable, things have gone entirely too far.

Unfortunately this is how things are done all over the place. When I was a consultant, almost every large company or government agency I worked for had their databases wide open. In some cases there were a few restrictions in place on which employees could access the databases directly but anyone with database access was able to get into almost anything. I can think of only two exceptions: one was a law firm that kept a small amount of information about current cases tightly controlled (though we did find an unencrypted Access database on the webserver full of credit card numbers in a public directory) and the headquarters of Home Depot, which kept data locked down pretty well. Almost everyone else was wide open internally. A few made me sign an NDA but I'm sure most would rather I simply not have access to their medical files in the first place. Rarely did I not have access to tons of databases filled with things totally unrelated to what I was working on. Digital information security in general is a joke.

Correct. I was a consultant for the Health Department, and the database of all the state citizens with AIDS was left on a conference table, unencrypted, on a disk, neatly labeled, with nobody in the room. I picked it up and delivered it to the chief of security, who almost crapped himself. This was supposedly their "most secure" data. Right.

A Dark Evil Omen:GeneralJim: LordJiro: There hasn't been a progressive in office for decades. Democrats are center-right authoritarians, while Republicans are extreme-right authoritarians. Just because Fox says every Democrat is the most liberal lib EVAR doesn't make it true.If Democrats are "center-right" and Republicans are "far-right," then who has made this country about half socialist? The problem is, YOU are a bit to the left of Che Guevara, so EVERYBODY looks like a rightist -- to you.

"Half socialist." In a country with 7% union penetration and mass privatization in every sector of government. You're beyond ridiculous.

Hey, everybody, let's get into a partisan slap fight, and ignore that we are being farked! That always works so well.

LordJiro:Doesn't matter one damn bit. There's nobody, NOBODY who has even a snowball's chance in Hell of getting elected that will get rid of this kind of power. The surveillance state took root decades ago, and we're not getting rid of it. Ever,

cptjeffHealth Care Reform. Not as good as it could or should have been, but a really big farking deal nonetheless.

Possibly better than what existed before, but all of the liberals' yapping about how progressives needed to get on board because it would be a stepping stone to single-payer or some other kind of UHC (or even government option) turned out to be nothing but excuses to get them to shut up long enough for the media to assume the healthcare was solved forever.

Seriously, you guys need to start recognizing that you are the only faction that likes ACA.

Bank Reform. See above.

lol

Stopped a Recession from deepening and started a slow recovery, despite massive opposition.

Used massive government debt to momentarily avert further disaster, until that gets worked through in which

Saved the US Auto Industry.

oh thank god, because car culture is so awesome.Those factories and workers should have been put to work making wind turbines and trains instead of perpetuating the old, dead economy. But "keep things exactly the same" has been Obama's real slogan since day 1.

Dramatically revamped US Foreign Policy to work in a much smarter way.

Babble

Ended the Iraq War

Obama wanted to keep some troops but the Iraqi government wouldn't give them legal immunity.Oh, and the Iraqi Civil War is still going strong, with bombings routinely killing dozens of people. But, yeah, it's over or whatever. Granted, that was the inevitable result of the invasion, which was mostly Bush's doing, with the explicit approval of the Democrats who voted to give him that option in 2002, even while we were screaming at them that it would be a disaster.

In the process of ending the Afghanistan War.

like how the sun is in the process of burning out?

Changed US armed engagement strategy from the use of conventional forces to lower impact targeted strikes and special forces missions.

yay for assassinations of noncombatants and American citizens without anything resembling due process. Double-tapping a 16 year old from Colorado, classy!

Tried to close Gitmo.

Not sure I'd even call his effort half-hearted. Sixteenth-hearted at best.

The system itself is what needs changing! How do you change a broken system from within that broken system?Let me guess- "shut up and vote for Democrats"? Or is "say whatever you want, as long as you vote for Democrats" also allowed?

Whoever might have convinced us that a lying politician like Obama might end this?

I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary."

And why would you assume these "non-establishment" types would be any better? The problem is that, once elected, the available power is intoxicating for EVERYONE.

That's not true. Some people love the idea of freedom more than personal power. An example is George Washington. Yeah, that's hella far to have to go back, but old George has an answer to THAT, too. He TOLD us not to get involved with political parties. Candidates' loyalty to the country is diluted when they have loyalty to the party. And, pretty much NOBODY with the stones to stand up for freedom at the expense of personal or party power is EVER going to make it through the primaries for any major party. That process is so soaked in evil that NOBODY clean is ever "The Candidate."

They're also wiretapping foreign based Internet and phone lines and intersections, and have exchange programs with other nations which give them the same access in other countries, but who cares about non-citizens. Following this this debate I've concluded they have no rights and everyone is fine with it.

A government based on the pinkie swear, he's-allowed-in-the-tree-house-now oaths, repeated with pomp and circumstance by disingenuous men whom we all know got no skin in the game as they spit out what they are told to swear to is the best we can do, why is everybody so amazed that there hasn't been any useful governance to come out of it?